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The Sandwich Police: Bon Me

Welcome to a brand-new feature on the Cod -- The Sandwich Police.* The first case involves an establishment the Cod has not patronized, but is under investigation because of its name. Back in the Cod's spawning grounds, AKA TLOTB&TC, there is a truck that sells banh mi. Not mad at that, at all. There are times when it's convenient to purchase a banh mi sandwich, as opposed to spending all damn weekend fixing yourself one from scratch. But! The banh mi truck is called "Bon Me," or the phonetic spelling of the Vietnamese banh mi. They did win a prize, but phonetically spelled foreign names seem more suited to a food court in Branson, MO, than to a prizewinning food truck in the Athens of fucking America.

Also, the menu suggests that they are not really that interested in making banh mi, considering they don't even take a stab at the banh mi dac biet, the Viet cold cut combo that is #1 on most every banh mi place's menu, and the benchmark sandwich. Instead, they're doing a sort of mix n match pan-Asiany sort of thing that would make sense in an alternate universe where Ikea started in Hong Kong instead of Sweden. Don't get the Cod wrong - it would be nice to see a truck like this parked outside of my office. I would welcome reports from folks who have visited. But in Boston, or any city with a reasonable concentration of Vietnamese-Americans, you should be able to find better banh mi than this.

Austin has a banh mi shop near the UT campus called Bite Mi. Haven't been there yet (no parking near UT + better banh mi in my part of town), but it sounds like it's popular with students because it's cheap rather than authentic.